Our Voice Matters

Young people felt that the online world was more of a positive than negative force in their lives. Most of the key negative impacts can be seen as
the “other side of the coin” to the positives:

• The potential for misinformation and fake news
• Feeling a lack of control over the amount of time they spend online
• The risks of connecting with people they didn’t know offline (although this was discussed to a lesser extent than the other two).

A key area of concern for both boys and girls was the impact of extreme content promoting unrealistic beauty standards, and the implications for young people’s body image and mental health.

The young people felt that on the whole it was right for illegal harms to be given more weight than legal harms. There was also consensus across the group that paid for advertising should be within scope of the Bill, including scam ads but also genuine ads that could nevertheless be harmful.

There was a feeling that despite being a positive step forward, lots more work was needed on the Bill. Young people cited privacy as a top priority and were  interested to discuss how the Bill would impact on this.

This research highlights three priority areas for young people where the Online Safety Bill needs close attention:

• Legal but harmful content: The Bill should adopt a wider definition of content harmful to children, explicitly referring to content which is harmful to children’s safety but also their wellbeing.
• Paid for advertising: Policymakers and parliamentarians should scrutinise the Government’s plans for online advertising in tandem to their  scrutiny of the Online Safety Bill, ensuring that the two programmes are aligned.
• Privacy: The Online Safety Bill needs to align closely with the Age Appropriate Design Code, and the new online safety regime will need to be implemented in a way that reinforces young people’s privacy rather than compromising it.